organizing « Well-Ordered Chaos

The Dreaded Kitchen Table

Well, I did it. After a year of allowing my kitchen table to become submerged under an ever-growing pile of random clutter, I finally reclaimed it:

It's a work table with work on it, even.

This is exactly the kind of work I need to be able to do on this table. I have [...]

In my last post, which was supposed to be published last week and instead was published yesterday, I wrote that I was going to do some maintenance organizing on my art studio. Since I did a major re-org last Spring, I thought it would be pretty easy — just put stuff away, do some cleaning, [...]

Resolved to get organized in 2010? You don’t have to go it alone.

It’s the New Year, and that means New Year’s it’s time for New Year’s resolutions.

One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions, year in and year out, is to “get organized”. According to the National Association of Professional Organizers, who polled more than 400 adults last November, 71% of respondents felt that their quality of [...]

My Organizing Journey: Getting Started — The Staging Area and the Big Sort

There’s a lot of wisdom in the old adage “A Place for Everything and Everything In Its Place”. However, if your space hasn’t been organized before, most of what you own does not yet have its own “place”. This is why it’s important to set aside a portion of your home as a [...]

My Organizing Journey: Getting Started — Identifying Activity Zones

The big day had arrived. My clutter buddy was at my home and by the end of that day I would, come hell or high water, have made some progress on organizing my home. My confidence had received a boost from learning that my apparently chaotic surroundings were actually a somewhat functional attempt [...]

The perfect is the enemy of my enemy is my … wait, what?

This weekend I wrote a Squidoo lens about tabby cats.

Why tabby cats?

Well, a Squidoo community that I’m a part of has been having weekly contests, and last week’s was to write a lens for the “animals and nature” category. I figured this would be good for me; all of my lenses to date have been [...]

Entryway continues

Today I’m picking up some of my containers from The Container Store on the way back from my med check. I’m on a low dose at the moment, thanks to the asshats who broke into my car last week, destroying the ignition, and forcing me to deal with that emergency instead of making my [...]

My Organizing Journey Begins

My organizing journey began in the fall of 2005 when a friend of mine called me with an interesting proposition.

“I think we should help each other get organized”, she said.

I was stunned. “Get organized? Help each other?” I asked. “How can I be any help to you at all? You’re pretty [...]

Organizing An Entryway, Step 3: Sorting

This is the third post in my Organizing an Entryway series. I’m breaking it down into steps that are as small as possible to prevent ADD overwhelm.

Now that I can actually walk in my entryway, I’m ready for the third step of the process (and the first step of the SPACE process): sorting.

Sorting actually [...]

Organizing an Entryway, Step 2: The Pre-Sort

This is the second post in my Organizing an Entryway series. I’m breaking it down into steps that are as small as possible to prevent ADD overwhelm.

The second step in my organizing process is a quick pre-sort. This is a quick way to get rid of two categories of stuff: things that don’t belong [...]

Well-Ordered Chaos

Now where did I put that post…